


Sick

by orphan_account



Category: Starfighter (Comic)
Genre: Feelings, Fluff, M/M, Romance, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-21
Updated: 2012-08-21
Packaged: 2017-11-12 14:05:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,080
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/491942
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Cain catches feelings.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sick

He wants to scratch them off with his fingernails, scrub them from his skin, but it’s impossible: No matter what he does, they won’t go away. Emotion has latched onto him like some sort of soul-sucking parasite, and he’s feeling things now when he looks at Abel—things that have nothing to do with his dick; things that make men desperate and render them useless in a war—and he doesn’t know how he’s going to get rid of them before they ruin everything. He  _has_  to get rid of them.   

He isn’t sure how or when all of this started, but the entire thing is making him sick to his stomach. When he’s with Abel he wants to put hands around the little prick's throat and strangle him for making him feel this way. Because all of this is Abel's fault, it has to be—they’ve been spending too much time together and it’s starting to mess with Cain’s head; that’s all there is to it. 

None of it’s real. Cain is forced to remind himself of this several times a day when the urge to grab Abel and kiss him, and not even as a prelude to sex, overcomes him and he can barely remember who he is. 

He’s in their room one afternoon, stewing over it all, when Abel comes in, a developing bruise on his face and a bleeding cut on his cheekbone. Cain tosses the magazine aside—some nerdy thing of Abel’s, full of pictures of hot girls sitting astride gleaming motorcycles—and sits up. “Who hit you?”

Abel responds with a pathetically obvious lie: “N-no one,” he fumbles, limping over to the closet and resting one trembling hand against the handle. He avoids Cain’s eyes. “I… I tripped getting out of the lift, it’s nothing.”

“Tch.” Cain gets up, throws on his jacket, and barges past Abel, elbowing him in the ribs for good measure. Abel lets out a pained little gasp, but Cain doesn’t pause to feel guilty. There’s hardly time for that. Someone’s been putting their filthy hands on his navigator and Cain’s going to find out precisely  _who_  if it’s the last thing he does.

When he returns to their room that night he is bloodied, scratched and bruised. Abel—awake in bed and dressed in nothing but his underwear—throws off the coverlet and rushes to him, wrapping arms around his waist and anxiously searching his face. “Cain,” he says in a hushed voice, and gingerly brings a hand to the side of Cain’s face. “What did you  _do_?”

Cain brushes away his navigator’s touch. “I took care of it, that’s all you need to know.”

“Why did you—”

“I said I took  _care_  of it,” Cain growls. He takes Abel’s hand and leads them over to the bed. “Sit.”

Abel sits at once, hands folded in his lap, and looks up at Cain with wide eyes. Cain can’t stand those pretty fucking eyes. Abel always gazes at him with such implicit trust, completely naïve to the fact Cain will soon betray him, and Cain hates the way it makes him feel. He’d demand that Abel not look at him at all if he thought he could get away with it.  

It’s not as if he’s overly eager to betray his navigator. But he has his orders from Bering, and he will do what needs to be done; even if what needs to be done seems nonsensical and even just plain fucking  _cruel_. He can’t feel sorry for Abel; he won’t let himself. Besides, the kid’s a fucking idiot, and maybe Cain’s even doing him a favour: He knows better than anyone that once you’ve been betrayed you’re unlikely to let it happen a second time. And maybe it’s best Abel learns that lesson now while he’s still young. Everything about him screams ‘sheltered daddy’s boy.’ Cain thinks it’s high time the kid realized not everybody around him has his best interests at heart, least of all his fighter.

Cain grabs the box of antiseptic wipes he’d swiped from the medical bay on his way back to the quarters and drags up a chair, sitting down in front of Abel.

Abel looks at the box of wipes and then at Cain, apparently confused. “Do you want me to…?”

“Shut up,” Cain mutters. He shrugs off his jacket, wincing a little, and takes hold of Abel’s thighs, dragging him forward a little. He carefully inspects the bruises on Abel’s face, the cut on his cheekbone where that bastard—built like a brick shithouse and twice the size of him—had smacked him, and brings the wipe to his face, dabbing at his wounds with as much gentleness as he’s capable of.

“Why’d he hit you?” he asks, pointedly ignoring the way Abel is staring at him.

Abel doesn’t answer him straight away. Finally, he says, “It was nothing. Don’t worry about it.”

Cain pauses and casts his navigator a hard glare. “Is that right?” Abel swallows nervously. “Well ‘nothing’ just got me a cracked fucking rib, so you’d better tell me _something_ , Abel.”

“Fine.” Abel sucks in a bracing breath and averts his eyes. He blushes again, as he always does when he’s nervous or uncomfortable, and Cain has to resist the urge to reach out and feel the warmth of that silky skin beneath his fingertips. “He was… saying things,” Abel finishes. “I got upset.”

“Oh yeah?” Cain is careful to keep his tone neutral. “What’d he say, then?”

Abel releases a shaky little breath and blurts, “He said something about you, alright? I lost it, told him he was wrong and to go screw himself, and he smacked me. I should have kept my mouth shut; it’s my fault.”

Cain clenches his teeth at this but doesn’t comment. Cleaning the little cut on Abel’s cheekbone, he asks, “What did he tell you about me?”

“That you fuck all your navigators,” Abel murmurs, staring a hole in the side of Cain’s face.

Cain snorts. “Only the pretty ones.”

“ _Cain_.”

“ _Abel_ ,” Cain replies, mimicking Abel’s nagging tone. He tosses the used wipe onto the bed and slaps his palms against Abel’s bare thighs, forcing them apart. He pushes Abel back onto the mattress and positions himself between the blond’s legs, pinning Abel's wrists over his head and slowly grinding against him, watching as a dark blush stains his pretty skin. Cain could probably come, just from this, but dry humping is for teenagers who can’t afford condoms.

“You’re hurt, Cain,” Abel says then, staring up at him with open concern. He brushes the dark hair out of Cain’s eyes and puts a hand to his cheek. “Let me clean you up first, okay?”

Cain bats his hand away. “I don’t need cleaning up,” he tells the blond, and swiftly unzips his own pants. “There’s only one thing you can do for me that’s going to make me feel better, and it doesn’t involve being clean.” Smirking at Abel’s obvious displeasure, he takes one of the navigator’s hands and forces it down his pants and onto his dick.

They fuck, slowly this time, because Cain’s ribs are still killing him, and afterwards Cain is so furious he can’t even think. It’s happening again. He’s  _feeling_  things—things that make him want to hold Abel to his chest and tell him all the sweet nothings in the world; to interlace their fingers and fall asleep in each other’s arms—and again it’s making him want to be violently ill.

He’s sure he knows what’s causing it now. It’s Abel. It’s the way Abel  _is_  when they’re together, as if they’re not really fucking but  _making love_. He holds Cain to his body when Cain’s inside him, as if Cain is something precious, and strokes his hair, rubs his shoulders, kisses every inch of skin he can reach. It’s fucking with Cain’s head, making him think this is something it isn’t, and he’s  _got_  to get a grip on this before he fucks himself over.

He knows what he needs to do now, and that is to set the boundaries once more, so that they’re  _both_  clear that this is about sex and convenience, and not a fucking relationship.

Abel sits up a little and leans over him, dropping a kiss on the side of his face. “Will you let me clean you up now?”

“No,” Cain replies, and turns his head to one side.

Abel releases a little huff of annoyance and flops back to the mattress beside him, winding his arms around Cain’s middle and kissing the side of his neck. “Why do you have to be so difficult?” he murmurs, and kisses him again. “Why can’t you just let someone help you?”

“Don’t need help,” Cain grunts, staring at the opposite wall. He needs to do something, to stop Abel from touching him like this, but he can’t yet bring himself to speak. Some twisted part of him enjoys this stupid fantasy—the fantasy that Abel actually cares for him, and that this isn’t all part of some warped little game. He knows it’s pathetic that he’s actually getting off on this—on having Abel play his dutiful, loving little girlfriend—but what he and Abel have, twisted and dishonest though it is, is a bizarre comfort to him.

He wishes it wasn’t.  

When Abel rests his head against Cain’s chest and releases a contented sigh, the sickness in Cain’s stomach eases somewhat, only to be replaced with a tight bundle of nerves instead. He doesn’t know why he’s letting this play out, but he’s certain he’s going to regret it later, when he’s in so fucking deep that he can’t do his job and Abel growing bored of him sends him over the edge.

Abel pushes his fingers through Cain’s, and Cain lets him, even brushes his thumb back and forth over Abel’s knuckles.  

“You didn’t have to go after him, you know,” Abel says after a while, and he looks up at Cain with those fathomless blue eyes of his.

Cain doesn’t look at him when he says, “I wouldn’t let anyone hurt you and get away with it.”

Abel sighs and rests his head against Cain’s chest once more, still holding tight to his hand. “I wouldn’t let anyone hurt you either,” he murmurs, so that Cain can barely hear him. “I’m going to protect you. I’m going to make sure we get home, Cain, both of us, I _promise_.”

Cain wishes he could tell Abel to save his resolve and protection for someone more deserving of it, for someone actually worth saving. Cain’s only here and partnered with him because he made some seedy deal with Bering, and Abel’s going to be the one who pays for it. But he can’t give anything away, even if part of him wants to.

With Abel’s words echoing in his mind, the guilt gnaws at him, and the feeling is as unfamiliar as it is uncomfortable. He wants to be able to tell Abel he’ll protect him, too; that he'll make sure no harm comes to him while they’re together. But that would be a lie, and Abel’s heard enough of those already.

So instead he rolls Abel over onto his back and climbs on top of him, staring down at him and brushing the pale hair out of his eyes with the back of his hand.

“What?” Abel whispers with a shy little smile, and Cain wonders how it’s possible for one person to blush so often.

“Give me a kiss,” Cain says, and without preamble Abel takes Cain’s head between his hands and drags him down to meet his lips. They kiss for a few minutes, and Abel’s lips are sweet and soft as petals against Cain’s. Abel holds him close, stroking the back of Cain’s neck with gentle fingers, and Cain revels in this—the illusion that either of them genuinely cares for the other—just for a moment. 

When they break apart Abel rolls onto his side and Cain winds an arm around him, pressing his chest to Abel’s back, and rests his chin on Abel’s shoulder. He wonders if Abel can feel his heart thudding.

 _Tomorrow_ , he thinks, as he kisses Abel’s shoulder. He’ll sort the feelings out tomorrow, will make sure Abel understands there can be no more of this, but for tonight all he wants is Abel in his arms. One last time. 

 


End file.
